SUNY New Paltz undermines Black Studies Department

Dear Editor,

Institutional antiBlackness is no new phenomenon. And this is mainly so because even throughout the SUNY New Paltz Black Studies Department’s inception in 1969, it has been episodically undermined for its existence as a department.

For 51 years, notions of progress — diversity — have been used inauthentically by politicians (local and nationwide) to establish a feigned sense of camaraderie between them and the people. As a crippling result, we have only seen fleeting instances in which the administration of SUNY New Paltz has ever kept to its word in fomenting authentic diversification for its nonwhite students and residents. It goes without saying that the majority of the Black (and unanticipatedly the white) student body collectively assents to the apathy, disregard, and disrepair of the department.

As a result, many, if not all Black students, both residents and non-residents, have never truly been given the rewarding opportunity of indulging in a humanistic experience at the college. As with all that has occurred with the recent white supremacist-state-sanctioned murders of Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and George Floyd, it was inevitably a matter of time until Donald Christian, the president of SUNY New Paltz, remarked on what he has designated as “incidents.”

Ultimately, it is the president and the administration who must make themselves aware and account for the fact that the SUNY New Paltz experience will never be the same, especially for its Black scholars.

Patrick Derilus Poughkeepsie, N.Y.